Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling
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water was drawn. This is a widely-spread charm, and it is extremely ancient. The pipkin placed across the tub or trough--trog--here signifies a bridge, and WLISLOCKI tells us that no Transylvanian tent-gypsy will cross a bridge without first spitting thrice over the rails into the water. The bridge plays an important part in the mythology and Folk-lore of many races. The ancient Persians had their holy mountain, Albordi, or Garotman, the abode of gods and blessed souls, to which they passed by the bridge Cin-vat, or Chinevad, whence the creed: "I believe in the resurrection of the dead; that all bodies shall live renewed again, and I believe that by the bridge Cin-vat all good deeds will be rewarded, and all evil deeds punished." The punishment is apparent from the parallel of the bridge Al Sirat, borrowed by the Mahommedans from the Persians, over which the good souls passed to reward, and from which the wicked tumbled down into hell. When I first met EMERSON in 1849 I happened to remark that a bridge in a landscape was like a vase in a room, the point on which an eye trained to the picturesque involuntarily rested. Nearly thirty years after, when we were both living at Shepherd's Hotel in Cairo, he reminded me of this one day when by the Nile we were looking at a bridge. As a bridge must cross a stream, or a torrent which is generally beautiful by itself, and as the cross or span has the effect of defining and framing the picture, as a circlet or tiara sets off a beautiful head, it is not remarkable that in all ages men have made such objects subjects of legend and song. Hence the oft-repeated Devil's Bridge, so-called because it seemed to simple peasants impossible for mere mortals to build, although bridges are habitually and more naturally connected with salvation and saints. He who in early ages built a bridge, did a great deed in times when roads were rare; hence the great priest was called the Pontifex. Another spell for the purpose of averting the effects of the evil eye is as follows: The mother of the overlooked child fills her mouth with salt water, and lets it drop or trickle on the limbs of the infant, and when this has been done, repeats: p. 59 "Miseç yákhá tut dikhen Sár páñori-- Mudaren! Náshvalipen prejia: Andral t'ro shero Andral t're kolyin, Andral t're per Andral t're punrá Andral t're vástá Kathe prejánen,-- Andre yákhá yon jánen!"
Like this water May they perish Sickness depart From thy head, From thy breast, From thy belly, From thy feet From thy hands, May they go hence Into the evil eyes!"
Bringe diss deinem Kind!" "Dear Wind, be not so wild, Take that unto thy child!" p. 59 "In which thing," adds the highly Protestant PRÆTORIUS ("Anthropodemus Plutonicus," p. 429), "she was like the Papists who would fain appease the Donnerwetter, or thunderstorms, with the sound of baptized bells, as though they were raging round like famished lions, or grim wolves, or a soldier foraging, seeking what they may devour." The Wind here represents the Wild Hunter, or the Storm, the leader of the Wüthende Heer, or "raging army," who, under different names, is the hero of so many German legends. That the voice of the wind should seem like that of wild beasts roaring for food would occur naturally enough to any one who was familiar with both. When a child refuses the breast the gypsies believe that a Pçuvus-wife, or a female spirit of the earth has secretly sucked it. In such a case they place between the mother's breasts onions, and repeat these words:-- "Pçuvushi, Pçuvushi, Ac tu náshvályi Tito tçud ač yakhá, Andre pçuv tu pçábuvá! Thávdá, thávdá miro tçud, Thávdá, thávdá, parno tçud, Thávdá, thávdá, sár kámáv,-- Mre čáveske bokhale!" "Earth-spirit! Earth-spirit Be thou ill. Let thy milk be fire Burn in the earth! Flow, flow, my milk! Flow, flow, white milk! Flow, flow, as I desire To my hungry child!" The same is applied when the milk holds back or will not flow, as it is then supposed that a Pçuvus-wife has secretly suckled her own child at the mother's breast. It is an old belief that elves put their own offspring in the place of infants, whom they sometimes steal. This subject of elf-changelings p. 60 is extensively treated by all the writers on witchcraft. There is even a Latin treatise, or thesis, devoted to defining the legal and social status, rights, &c., of such beings. It is entitled, "De Infantibus Supposititiis, vulgo Wechsel-Bälgen," Dresden, 1678. "Such infants," says the author (JOHN VALENTINE MERBITZ), "are called Cambiones, Vagiones (à continuo vagitu), Germanis Küllkräpfe, Wechselkinder, Wechselbälge, all of which indicates, in German belief, children which have nothing human about them except the skin." When the child is subject to convulsive weeping or spasms, and loses its sleep, the mother takes a straw from the child's sleeping-place and puts into her mouth. Then, while she is fumigated with dried cow-dung, into, which the hair of the father and mother have been mingled, she chants:-- "Bala, bálá pçubuven, Čik te bálá pçubuven, Čik te bálá pçubuven, Pçábuvel náshvályipen!" "Hair, hair, burn! Dirt and hair burn Dirt and hair burn Illness be burned!" This bears manifest mark of Hindoo origin, and I have no doubt that the same ceremony in every detail is practised in India at the present day. In Southern Hungary convulsive weeping in children is cured as follows: In the evening, when the fire burns before the tent, the mother takes her child in her arms and carries it three times around the fire, putting on it a pipkin full of water, into which she puts three coals. With this water she washes the head of her child, and pours some of it on a black dog. Then she goes to the next stream or brook, and lets fall into it a red twist, saying:-- "Lává Niváshi ádá bolditori te láhá m're čaveskro rovipen! Káná sástavestes ánáv me tute pçábáyá te yándrá." "Nivashi take this twist, and with it the weeping of my child. When it is well I will bring thee apples and eggs." p. 61 When a child "bumps" its head the swelling is pressed with the blade of a knife, and the following spell is muttered thrice, seven, or nine times, according to the gravity of the injury:-- "Ač tu, ač in, ač kovles, The may sik tu mudarés! Andre pcuv tu jiá, Dikav tut me ñikáná! Shuri, shuri áná, De pal pçuv!" "Be thou, be thou, be thou weak (i.e., soft) And very soon perish! Go thou into the earth, May I see thee never more Bring knives, knives, Give (i.e., put) into the earth." Then the knife is stuck three, seven, or nine times into the earth. If the child or a grown person has a bleeding at the nose, some of the blood is covered with earth, and the following verse repeated "Pçuvush, dáv tute Pcuvush, lává mánge, De tre cáveske Hin may táte! Sik lava!"
Pcuvus, oh take from me, Give it to thy child, It is very warm, Take it quickly!"
André selene beshá! Beshá beshá tu káthe! Penáv, penáv me tu te!" "Depart from the belly Live in the green! (tree) Remain, remain thou here I say, I say to thee!" The black dog is in many countries associated with sorcery and diabolical influences, and "in European heathendom it was an emblem of the evil principle. The black demon Černobog was represented by the Slavs as a black dog. Among the Wallachians there is a horrible vampire-like creature called Priccolitsh, or Priculics, who appears as a man in fine healthy condition, but by night he becomes a dog, kills people by the mere touch, and devours them." The black dogs of Faust and of Cornelius Agrippa will occur to most readers. Gypsies have always been regarded as sorcerers and child-stealers, and it is remarkable that Lilith, the mother of all witchcraft, did the same. At the present day the Slavonian gypsies have spells against such a spirit. In the Chaldæan magic, as set forth by Lenormant, as I have already stated, the powers of evil are incarnate diseases, they are seven in number, and they are invoked by means of verses which bear an extraordinary resemblance to those which are still current in Italy as well as in other countries. According to some writers this is all mere chance coincidence, or due to concurrent causes and similar conditions in different countries. p. 63 That diseases, like hunger, or death, or the terrors of the night, may have been incarnated as evil spirits naturally by all mankind may be granted, but when we find them arranged in categories of numbers, in widely different countries, employing the same means of banishing them--that is, by short songs and drum-beating--when we find these incantations in the same general forms, often with the same words, our belief as to the identity of origin is confirmed at every step. We can admit that the Jews were in Babylon and wandered thence all over the world, but that any other religious or superstitious system should have done the same would be obstinately denied. And by an incredible inconsistency, scholars who admit the early migrations of whole races on a vast scale, from the remotest regions of the East to Western Europe, deny that legends and myths come with them or that they could have spread in like manner. One of the attributes of the witch of the Middle Ages in which she has been confused with the Queen of the Fairies, and fairies in general, is that she steals newly-born children. This is a very ancient attribute of the female demon or sorceress or strega, and it is found among Jews at the present day who believe in the Benemmerinnen, or witches who haunt women in childbirth as well as in Lilith. "The Jews banish this first wife of Adam by writing on the walls, 'Adam chava chuz Lilith,' ('Keep away from here, Lilith!')" ("Anthropodemus Plutonicus," by JOHN PRÆTORIUS, 1666). That it is very ancient is rendered probable because the famous Bogomile formula of incantation against the twelve fever-fits (Tresevica), or kinds of fever, turns entirely on the legend of six children stolen by the demon who is compelled to restore them. Here we have the very oldest form of witchcraft known, that is incarnate disease in numbers allied to child-stealing. This spell of the Tresevica. is attributed, says Dr. GASTER, to Pope JEREMIA, the founder of Bogomilism (the great Oriental Slavonian heresy which spread over Europe in the Middle Ages and prepared the way for Protestantism. "There is no doubt, therefore, that the spell is derived from the East, and I have else p. 64 where proved its existence in that quarter as early as the eighth century. It may have been of Manichæan origin. It has been preserved up to the present day in all the lands of Eastern Europe and, with certain modifications, exists among Germans and Jews." Though attributed to Sisynios, the immediate follower Of MANES, as chief of the Manichæans, it seems to have been derived from an earlier Oriental tale which became the basis of all later formulæ. I give it here in the Roumanian form, which closely resembles the old one. Here, as in all the other variants, the demon is a feminine one. The following is the legend:-- "I, Sisveas, I came down from the Mount of Olives, saw the Archangel Gabriel as he met the Avestitza, wing of Satan, and seized her by the hair and asked her where she was going. And she answered that she was going to cheat the holy Virgin by her tricks, steal the new-born child, and drink its blood. The archangel asked her how she could get into houses so as to steal the children, and she answered that she changed herself into a fly or a cat or such forms. But whosoever knew her twelve and a half (nineteen) names and wrote them out she could not touch. She told him these names, and they were written down." There is a Coptic as well as a Greek parallel to this. The fairy who steals the children is called Lilith, and is further identified with Herodias and her twelve daughters as personifications of different kinds of fever. This is extremely interesting, as it casts some light on a question which has greatly puzzled all writers on witchcraft as to how or why Herodias was so generally worshipped in company with Diana by witches as a goddess in Italy. This is mentioned by PIPERNUS, GRILLANDUS, MIRANDOLA, and HORST. The name is probably much older than that of the Herodias of the New Testament. Footnotes 46:1 Of the seventh son, PIPERNUS remarks in his book, "De Effectibus Magicis" (1647): "Est ne sanandi superstitiosus modus eorum, qui orti sunt die Parasceves, et quotquot nullo fœmines sexu intercedente, ac ab ortu septimi masculi legitimo thoro sunt nati? memorat VAIRUS, I. de fascinatione; II. DEL RIUS, lib. i., part 21. GARZONIUS nel Serraglio. J. CÆSAR BARICELLUS secundus scriptor in hort. genialé." 54:1 "Uber Marcellus Burdigalensis, von Jacob Grimm. Gelesen in der Academie der Wisscnschaften," 28 Juni, 1847 (Berlin. DUMMLER). In this work, as well as in the German Mythology, by the same author, and in RUDOLF ROTH'S "Litteratur und Geschichte des Veda" (Stuttgart, 1846), the reader will find, as also in the works of the elder CATO and PLINY, numbers of these incantations. 55:1 The divination by the running brook has been known in other lands. The Highlanders when they consulted an oracle took their seer, wrapped him in the hide of a newly-killed ox or sheep, and left him in some wild ravine by a roaring torrent to pass the night. From such sights and sounds there resulted impressions which were reflected in his dreams (Vide Scott, "Lady of the Lake," and notes). The fact that running water often makes sounds like the human voice has been observed by the Algonkin Indians of Maine and Nova Scotia (Vide "The Algonkin Legends of New England," by Charles G. Leland). CHAPTER IV South Slavonian and other Gypsy Witch-lore THERE is current in the whole of the Southern Slavonian provinces a vast mass of legends and other lore relating to witches, which, in the opinion of Dr. FRIEDRICH S. KRAUSS, may also be regarded as Romany, since it is held in common with the gypsies. There can, indeed, be very little doubt that most of it was derived from, or disseminated by, them, since they have been the principal masters in magic and doctors in medicine in the Slavonic lands for many centuries. There are others deeply learned in this subject who share the same opinion, it being certain that the gypsies could hardly have a separate lore for themselves and one for magic practices on others, and p. 66 [paragraph continues] I entertain no doubt that they are substantially the same; but to avoid possible error and confusion, I give what I have taken in this kind from Dr. KRAUSS 1 and others by itself. As the English word witch, Anglo-Saxon Wicca, comes from a root implying wisdom, 2 so the pure Slavonian word vjestica, Bulgarian, vjescirica (masculine, viestae), meant originally the one knowing or well informed, and it has preserved the same power in allied languages, as Veaa (New Slovenish), knowledge, Vedavica, a fortune-teller by cards, Viedma (Russian), a witch, and Vedwin, fatidicus. In many places, especially in Dalmatia, witches are more gently or less plainly called Krstaca, the crossed, from Krst, a cross, i.e., χριστό{! 0x3c < !}<υ{! 0x3e > !}>σ{! 0x3c < !}<{! 0x2f / !}/υ{! 0x3e > !}> {Greek xristós}, or Rogulja, "horned," derived from association with the horns of devils. In Croatia the Italian Striga is used, while among the Slovenes and Kai-Kroats the term copernica (masculine, coprnjak). "But it enrages the witches so much to be called by this word that when they hear that any one has used it they come to his house by night and tear him in four pieces, which they cast afar into the four quarters of the earth, yea, and thereunto carry away all the swine, horses, and cattle, so intolerable is their wrath." Therefore men use the word hmana zena, or "common woman," hmana being the Slavonic pronunciation of the German word gemein, or common. In Dalmatia and far into Servia a witch is called macisnica, and magic, mačija, which is, evidently enough, the Italian magia. But there are witches and witches, and it appears that among the p. 67 learned the vjestica differs from the macionica, and this from the Zlokobnica who, as the "evil-meeter," or one whom it is unlucky to encounter in the morning, is probably only one who has the evil eye. A quotation from a Servian authority, given by Dr. KRAUSS, is as follows:-- "I have often heard from old Hodzas and Kadijas, that every female Wallach, as soon as she is forty years old, abandons the 'God be with us!' and becomes a witch (vjestica), or at least a zlokobnica or macionica. A real witch has a mark of a cross under her nose, a zlokobnica has some hairs of a beard, and a macionica may be known by a forehead full of dark folds (frowns), with blood-spots in her face" ("Niz srpskih pripoviedaka. VUK. vit. Vecevica. Pancevo," p. 93. 1880. Of the great number of South Slavonian terms for the verb to enchant or bewitch, it may suffice to say that the commencement, carati, cari carani, carovnik, &c., appear to have much more affinity to the gypsy chor-ava, to steal or swindle, and chov-hani, a witch, than to the Italian ciarlatano, and the French and English charlatan, from which Dr. KRAUSS derives them. THE VILAS-SYLVANA ELEMENTARY SPIRITS. Among the Slavonic and gypsy races all witchcraft, fairy- and Folk-lore rests mainly upon a belief in certain spirits of the wood and wold, of earth and water, which has much in common with that of the Rosicrucians and PARACELSUS, but much more with the gypsy mythology (as given by Wlislocki, "Vom Wandernden Zigeunervolke," pp. 49-309), which is apparently in a great measure of directly Indian origin. "In the Vile," says Dr. KRAUSS, "also known as Samovile, Samodivi, and Vilevrjaci, we have near relations to the forest and field spirits, or the 'wood-' and 'moss-folk' of Middle Germany, France, and Bavaria; the 'wild people' of Eifel, Hesse, Salzburg, and the Tyrol; the wood-women and wood-men of Bohemia; the Tyrolese Fanggen, Fänken, Nörkel, and Happy Ladies; the Roumanish Orken, Euguane, and Dialen; the Danish Ellekoner; the Swedish Skogsnufvaz; and the Russian Ljesje; while in certain respects they have affinity with the Teutonic Valkyries." Yet they p. 68 differ on the whole from all of these, as from English fairies, in being more like divinities, who exert a constant and familiar influence for good or evil on human beings, and who are prayed to or exorcised on all occasions. They have, however, their exact parallel among the Red Indians of North America as among the Eskimo, and it is evident that they are originally derived from the old or primeval Shamanic faith, which once spread all over the earth. It is very true, as Dr. KRAUSS remarks, that in the West of Europe it is becoming almost impossible to trace this true origin of spirits now regarded as merely diabolical, or otherwise put into new rôles; but among the South Slavonians and gypsies we can still find them in very nearly their old form and playing the same parts. We can still find the Vila as set forth in old ballads, the incarnation of beauty and power, the benevolent friends of sufferers, the geniuses of heroes, the dwellers by rock and river and greenwood tree. But they are implacable in their wrath to all who deceive them, or who break a promise; nay, they inflict terrible punishment even on those who disturb their rings or the dances which they make by midsummer moonlight. Hence the proverb applied to any man who suddenly fell ill: "Naiso je na vilinsko kolo" ("He stepped on a fairy-ring"). From this arbitrary exercise of power we find the Vila represented at times as a spirit who punishes and torments. Thus we are told that there was once a shepherd named STANKO, who played beautifully on the flute. One evening he was so absorbed in his own music that when the Ave Maria bell rung, instead of repeating the prayer he played it. As he ended he saw a Vila sitting on a hedge. And from that hour she never left him, By table, by his bed, at work or play, the white form and unearthly eyes of the spirit were close to him. "By a spell to him unknown, He could never be alone." Witches and wizards were summoned to aid him, but to no avail; nay, it made matters worse, for the Vila now often beat him, and when, p. 69 people asked him why it was, he replied that the Vila did so because he refused to wander out into the world with her. And yet again he would be discovered in the top of a tree, bound with bast; and so it went on for years, till he was finally found one morning drowned in a ditch. So in the Wolf Dietrich legend the hero refuses the love of die rauhe Else, and is made mad by the witch and runs wild. All of which is identical with what is told in an Algonkin tale (vide "The Algonkin Legends of New England"). There are three kinds of witches or spirits among the Southern Slavonians which correspond in every respect exactly to those in which the gypsies believe. The first of these are the Zracne Vile, or aerial spirits. These, like the spirits of the air of Scripture, are evily-disposed to human beings, playing them mischievous tricks or inflicting on them fatal injuries. They lead them astray by night, like Friar Rush and Robin Goodfellow, or the English gypsy Mullo doods, or bewilder and frighten them into madness. Of the second kind are the Earth spirits, Pozemne Vile, in gypsy Pcûvushi or Pûvushi. These are amiable, noble, and companionable beings, who often give sage counsel to men. Thirdly are the Water sprites, in Slavonic Povodne Vile, in gypsy Nivashi, who are to the highest degree vindictive at times, yet who behave kindly to men when they meet them on land. But woe to those who, while swimming, encounter them in streams or lakes, for then the goblins grasp and whirl them about until they perish. From this account by Dr. KRAUSS, it appears as if this Slavonic mythology were derived from the gypsy, firstly, because it is more imperfect than the latter, and secondly, because in it Vilas, or spirits, are confused with witches, while among the gypsies they are clearly separated and distinctly defined. Dr. WLISLOCKI Says ("Vom Wand. Zigeunervolke," p. 253) that "gypsies are still a race given to Shamanism, but yet they reverence a highest being under the name of devla or del." This is, however, the case to-day with all believers in Shaman or Sorcery-religion, the difference between them and monotheists being that this highest god is little worshipped Yüklə 0,99 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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